Contents

History and Development

At the end of Banjo-Kazooie, Stop 'n' Swop was mentioned explicitly by Mumbo Jumbo, who, if the player collected all 100 Jiggies in the game, showed animated photographs of Banjo and Kazooie returning to in-game locations - specifically, Sharkfood Island, Wozza's Cave and the mysterious closed door in Gobi's Valley, to obtain hidden items: two colored eggs and a key of ice. Mumbo explained that Banjo and Kazooie would be able to access the places in Banjo-Tooie.

However, in Banjo-Tooie, the player never returned to these locations. Three eggs and a key were in the game, obtained by shooting Banjo-Kazooie cartridges in Spiral Mountain and Jinjo Village, and the third egg was in Heggy's Egg Shed in Wooded Hollow. (Notably, all three eggs and key were smaller than their Banjo-Kazooie counterparts.) The eggs could be taken to Heggy and hatched to unlock some hidden secrets, although the Yellow Egg had to be hatched by Kazooie herself. The Ice Key was used to find the Mega-Glowbo, which in turn unlocked Kazooie's Dragon transformation. The Pink Secret Egg unlocked a move called the Breegull Bash, which allowed Banjo to take Kazooie out of his backpack and slam her on the ground like a club. The Blue Secret Egg unlocked a cheat code allowing eggs to home in on enemies, and the Yellow Secret Egg unlocked a Jinjo as a character in the multiplayer mode.

Ice Mario and SubDrag later shocked the Banjo-Kazooie fanbase in 2001 by discovering seven cheat codes (see below) which granted access to not only these four items, but also three further eggs, making a total of six eggs and the Ice Key.[1] After this, speculation about the original intention of Stop 'n' Swop became rife.

The original intended method of Stop 'n' Swop was to activate the secret areas (presumably by being told the codes in Banjo-Tooie), collect the items in Banjo-Kazooie, and then to stop the game, turn it off and swap to Banjo-Tooie. This idea exploited the workings of the Nintendo 64's Rambus RDRAM -- the data in the memory would be retained for a few seconds after turning the console off, allowing the next game inserted to read information from the last game. However, in 1999, changes were made to the way the console handles its memory, cutting the window of cartridge swapping time down to around a second. This would have made Stop 'n' Swop next to impossible on Nintendo 64 models produced from 1999 onwards. Therefore, the feature was scrapped from Banjo-Tooie fairly late in development.[2]

In response to a poll by MundoRare, Gregg Mayles also claimed that Stop 'n' Swop was "a deceptively clever way of linking all of Rare’s N64 titles together, that was tragically undone by technical irregularities."[3]

Stop 'n' Swop Items

A completed Stop 'n' Swop inventory screen in the Xbox Live Arcade version of Banjo-Tooie, featuring the six eggs and the Ice Key.

The following is a list of the Stop 'n' Swop items and the Sandcastle codes to access them in Banjo-Kazooie. Note that every cheat must be preceded by "CHEAT." Something to note is that during Banjo-Kazooie's 100-Jiggy ending sequence, Mumbo only shows the Pink Secret Egg, Ice Key, and Blue Secret Egg.

Another note is that in Banjo-Kazooie XBLA, activating the sandcastle codes to unlock Stop 'n' Swop areas will cause the game disable saving, Achievements, and Leaderboards on that particular file. The items are instead unlocked once the game detects a Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts save file on the same hard drive (see below).

Revival

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

During E3 2008, Rare announced a port of Banjo-Kazooie to the Xbox Live Arcade, later revealing that the port would feature Stop 'n' Swop connectivity between itself and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, the third installment of the Banjo-Kazooie series. This version Stop 'n' Swop is accomplished between these games quite simply: BKXBLA detects a Nuts & Bolts save file and unlocks the Stop 'n' Swop item locations, the player collects the secret items in BKXBLA, then Nuts & Bolts in turn reads the save file, and Stop 'n' Swop Crates appear in certain areas around the game's hub world, Showdown Town waiting to be collected.

For the secondary Stop 'n' Swop which affects the L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges DLC, see below.

Banjo-Tooie XBLA

The Xbox Live Arcadeport of Banjo-Tooie features a revival of the originally-intended Stop 'n' Swop connectivity with Banjo-Kazooie XBLA.[4] In addition to this, Banjo-Tooie XBLA's Stop 'n' Swop also unlocks special contest-winning vehicle blueprints in the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts downloadable "L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges."

Rare has also added three new Secret Eggs to Banjo-Tooie XBLA: A Bronze Egg, a Silver Egg, and a Gold Egg. These Eggs take the place of the Eggs and Key from the original version of the game, located in hidden Banjo-Kazooie Game Paks and are part of a new Stop 'n' Swop function (see below).

Prizes

The prizes for Stop 'n' Swop in Banjo-Tooie XBLA are as follows. Given that the only prizes that actually affect the game are ones returning from the original version, it is likely that the "original plan" for Stop 'n' Swop only includes these items, and that Rare never came up with anymore. This was confirmed by a statement in a May 15, 2009 edition of Scribes, in which the original Tooie prizes were described as a "self-contained approximation of the original plan".[5]

Note that the prizes won from Eggs are not unlocked by any specific Egg -- the prizes are based on the order in which they are hatched.[6]

L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges

The "L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges" downloadable content for Nuts & Bolts also features contest-winning vehicles created by fans that are unlocked in the game upon completion of the original Stop 'n' Swop between Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie XBLA.

Prizes

The prizes for Stop 'n' Swop in L.O.G.'s Lost Chalenges are the following vehicle blueprints.[7]

Flying Beetle

Transforming Air Fighter (called Transformation Machine in-game)

Robot Ron (called Robot in-game)

Rotating Anti-Aircraft Turret (called Rotating Turret in-game)

Tank/Armored Personnel Carrier (called Tank in-game)

Floating Carousel (called Carousel in-game)

B-T Gruntling (called Gruntling in-game)

Stop 'n' Swop II

Banjo-Tooie XBLA features yet another Stop 'n' Swop, this one titled Stop 'n' Swop II. Stop 'n' Swop II is first activated when the player has Heggy hatch the final Stop 'n' Swop egg. Stop 'n' Swop II also features three new spotted Secret Eggs, colored gold, silver and bronze, as well as three other "items," which are unlocked Achievement-style for performing certain tasks within Banjo-Tooie XBLA. Dialog from the game suggests that Stop 'n' Swop II will be used in a future game.

Legacy

The whiteboard in Grabbed by the Ghoulies.

Stop 'n' Swop is infamous among fans due to its mysteriousness. Though it is well-known that Stop 'n' Swop (in its original form) was scrapped, many fans of the series continue to speculate and theorize about it. This has lead Rare to make some humorous references to the dropped feature for fans to find.

In Grabbed by the Ghoulies, there is a whiteboard referencing Stop 'n' Swop. It shows some unintelligible overhead maps, an equation of "[egg] [egg] [egg] [egg] [key] = ?" and states

"HOMEWORK:

1. Collect Ice Key.

2. Collect Eggs

3. Activate secret level."

In Banjo-Pilot, there is a "Stop 'n' Swap" option in Cheato's menu, which can bought for 999 Cheato Pages. When the player buys it, Cheato states, "So you want to know about Stop N Swap, eh? I hope you're ready. Here goes...Why don't you stop annoying me and swap this game for a nice book or something?"

In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, jokes about Stop 'n' Swop are also abundant. For example, Bottles has an option in his information menu labled "Stop 'n' Swop Truth" to be bought for 6000 Musical Notes. It is not possible to actually buy this option as there are 5,230 Notes in the game (5,350 with L.O.G's Lost Challenges), 1,900 of which are counted in the totals menu. However, the text string has been extracted from the game, revealing that if the option were to be purchased, Bottles says "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, and we couldn't show that in a game with this rating. Put it out of your mind and think happy thoughts! Thanks for the notes!".
In addition, one of Trophy Thomas's lines after the player completes a challenge of his has him saying, "I'm almost speechless at how well you did. You must be using a cheat code! That's it! Did you stop the game and swop something?"
It is also referenced as one of the Lord of Games' questions during the Six of the Best challenge in Spiral Mountain, "What is the supposed link between Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie that some fansites still won't shut up about?", the answer to which is, of course, Stop 'n' Swop.